My So-Called Live

Goodbye Game Master

Gabe bids farewell to Patrick and then talks about two new XBLA games.

Whew, what a month it has been. So very many games to review, a ton of events to cover and it's not even E3 yet! It's been a crazy maelstrom my darling little X-bots, both on our honored home console and abroad on rival machines. We've had some serious winners over the last month and a half or so (like GTA4, of course, but also The Bourne Conspiracy), but we've also had our share of disappointments (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, I'm staring right at you). Overall, however, I certainly can't complain since the wealth of games has kept me from returning to my as-yet-unbeaten back-catalog of Mass Effect and a second playthrough of BioShock. If the industry would just lighten up for five seconds, perhaps I'd be able to go back and play some of these gems, but I digress.

Fans of the feature will no doubt notice that 'Spy-Hunter hasn't been happening lately, and I apologize for the radio silence on that front. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of stuff we have to cover, I haven't been able to pay 'Spy-Hunter as much attention as it requires, so our weekly frag fests have lain dormant for the last couple of weeks (much to my considerable chagrin). Of course, this is not only due to the seemingly growing number of game releases we must cover in the interest of due diligence, but also to something I'm about to discuss next...

Missing Patrick Joynt

As I'm sure you're all aware (especially listeners of our benificent podcast), former fellow Associate Console Editor Patrick Joynt has moved on from GameSpy. This news fills me with sadness, because not only had Patrick grown to be a furiously dedicated coworker, but due to a consistently geeky series of mutual hobbies, he also has become a very good friend as well. And while that friendship has proven tough enough to survive his pursuit of alternate career goals, it's still a bit of a shock to look across my muddy, artillery-shelled trench and see his distinct absence where before he would have been pulling the pin on a freshly-primed grenade, ready to unleash a torrent of shrapnel in whatever game we happened to be battling at the time. Perhaps the war/work metaphor has become tired, but it's the most apt for the way I feel.

One thing that I can definitely say about Patrick that I think we can all agree with is that he knew how to turn out the work. Say what you will about his opinions (and I know there are quite a few of you out there that still harbor grudges over his Two Worlds review or his Lost Odyssey review, but nobody could crank out the copy like Patrick. The man is simply a machine. Without him here, the stacks of games on my desk are all the more intimidating.

So, I'd like to dedicate this column to a demonic dungeon master, a daring (if sometimes stubborn as hell) wordsmith, a brother in role-playing and a dear, dear friend.